Audiogalaxy is history :(

The universe of unauthorized music file-sharing services is getting smaller.

The music industry said Monday it had reached an out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit filed in May against Audiogalaxy.com, one of the more popular descendents of the now-dormant Napster.

As part of the settlement, any future music-sharing system operated by Audiogalaxy.com will have to be a "filter-in" system, according to the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Music Publishers' Association, which filed the suit. For any music to become available on the system, the songwriter, music publisher and/or recording company must first give their consent, according to the RIAA and NMPA.

Audiogalaxy.com will also have to pay music publishers and the recording industry "a substantial sum," according to the plaintiffs, "based on Audiogalaxy's assets and interest in resolving this case quickly."

The settlement suggests, as it has in the case with Napster, that the long journey toward viable music-based businesses on the Internet will be making a lot of pit stops in courtrooms along the way.

ag has suq'd pretty bad for a long time. the Gnutella network is so much better (LimeWire is on the gnutella network). hopefully, it will become bigger than stupid, proprietary kazaa/morpheus. /aside: why would any1 want to make a phre p2p client on a closed, proprietary protocol?/

I haven't really been interested in downloading music by popular bands on AG, and still not as of today. I only use AG to find those not-so-popular titles, and it works great. RIAA can chase every last peer-to-peer program or server they want for all I care, they still won't eliminate file-sharing. One question remains in my mind: "Who's next?"